Rocking Baby Card.

  This card was made just as an example to show  my new crafting friend that cards don't have to be square or rectangular. They can be any shape you  like. I didn't put too much effort into the planning of this card, if I had I would have made a better job of it and got the plaid  background paper straight . Maybe one day I'll repeat this exercise and get it right.
 The how to....
I used the Martha Stewart circle cutter and cut three circles, ( in different colour card/paper) each circle slightly small than the preceding one.
I folded the largest circle in half and layered up the two smaller circles then cut them in half and glued them onto the folded circle.

I cut the rocking horse out using the Spellbinder die before taking the horse out of the die, I turned the die over and with an ink dauber  I sponged over the  areas of the horses harness and saddle that showed through the back of the die with red ink.  I then sponged over the horse and rocker  with a  a light beige/grey ink.  then removed the horse from the die.
This gave me a stencilled looking rocking horse which was okay, but I felt it needed more colour.
I sponged the horse and added some speckles to it's hind quarters and then drew over the reigns and saddle with marker pens, joining up all the gaps in the reigns left by  the stencil, then outlined  the red with the fine tipped black pen.
I scribbled in the mane, tail  and hooves with a black and a white pens, added  a few  hight lights here and there
.The rocker I cut out from S.U' s crumb cake card stock  and sponged over the  open areas on the back of the die with soft suede ink then removed it from the die and stamped over the whole thing with  new
" Hardwood " background stamp from S.U. glued the horse to the rocker, then the rocker to the card.
This card rocks but if you didn't want it to rock you could trim 1/4" off  the bottom of the back of the circle this will stop the card from rocking.

 I have to say I have owned this Spellbinder rocking horse die for many, many years and have only used it once or twice in all those years. It's one of those dies I call "novelty dies" this is because  there is not a huge amount of use for it other than  for baby/ children's cards.  If you don't have hoards of  young children or grandchildren to make cards for,....as lovely as it is,.... it's not worth buying.

I bought  this die before I had grandchildren and when  my own children were teenagers.
I bought it purely and simply because I loved it.
But I have had to wait many years for this die to become useful.

My advice to you would be don't buy  a die just because it's beautiful,..... unless you can think of several people in your life that  would love to receive a card with that particular die cut  on it,  also... I recommend you study the die before purchasing and ask yourself can the die cut shapes be utilized in other ways, can you see other useful objects within the die if you snipped away certain parts.
( Example can you turn that  gorgeous baby pram into a cat basket by snipping away the wheels and hood.)
 In my mind there is absolutely no point in buying a die if you don't have more than one use for it. No  matter how beautiful it is. (I  say this  because I have quite a few dies sat in drawer that are beautiful,  but to date I have never made anything with them.) So save yourself some money and resist the urges to spend money on things you don't really  need.